Blackstone's Jas Khaira: AI debt fears are overblown

Blackstone has built a business around the idea that AI needs capital at a scale earlier tech cycles did not. Its $1.3 trillion in assets under management and its compute-financing playbook — lending against GPU collateral and committed customer contracts — made it an early backer of CoreWeave, then extended the model to other neoclouds. That same model is now the subject of the market's debate, as the debt burdens it helped create have grown and borrowing costs have risen.

The recent pressure has been visible in both private and public markets. CoreWeave shares dropped more than 20% in recent days, and Firmus cancelled its planned listing on the Australian Securities Exchange at a target valuation of roughly $30 billion. Khaira attributed the Firmus outcome to the market not being there at that valuation, and described the broader question as one of finding the right price for neoclouds while interest rates move up.

Khaira's response is that the structure of the debt matters more than its headline size. Because most data centers are built for hyperscalers, he argued, the financing is ultimately backed by the most creditworthy companies rather than by speculative borrowers. Even so, he acknowledged that returns on AI adoption are uneven and that adoption could follow a sawtooth pattern, with compute appearing oversupplied until usage catches up.